NGHIÊN cứu TRI NHẬN về CHUYỂN DI TIÊU cực TRONG CÁCH sử DỤNG GIỚI từ TIẾNG ANH của NGƯỜI VIỆT

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

TRAN TIN NGHI

A COGNITIVE STUDY OF NEGATIVE
TRANSFER OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS
MADE BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS
Major ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Code 9220201
DOCTORAL THESIS IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
AND HUMANITIES

SUPERVISORS 1 Assoc Prof , Dr Tran Huu Phuc
2 Assoc Prof , Dr Nguyen Tat Thang

Da Nang, 2022


STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no
material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which
I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma
No other person‘s work has been used without due acknowledgments in the thesis
This thesis has not been submitted to award any degree or diploma in any other
tertiary institution
Da Nang, March 2022

i

ABSTRACT
Many current linguists are interested in whether cognition has any influence on
foreign language acquisition A large number of research have been conducted on L1
transfer; however, the grounds for applying Cognitive Linguistics to language transfer
continue to focus on surface structures of the mother tongue and target languages, rather
than the underlying causes, which are the cognition of language users The purpose of this
thesis is to investigate the cognitive factors that influence the usage of English prepositions
by Vietnamese learners of English The author presented how Vietnamese learners of
English express prepositional meanings from the perspective of Cognitive linguistics and
which factors negatively impacted the way Vietnamese learners of English used
prepositions An online survey investigating negative L1 transfer on the use of English
prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English was distributed to English learners
Two thousand, eight hundred and thirty-one respondents of differing proficiency levels,
qualifications, locations, ages, and biological sexes were surveyed Analysis of the
responses showed that negative L1 transfer was associated with the respondents‟
cognition Their personal perception of the world and language influenced their L2
production An empirical experiment using an AI chatbot (a form of Facebook Messenger)
was also included in the survey to check whether the learning environment contributed to
language transfer or not The author built a speaking and writing assignment corpus from
Preparatory Courses for VSTEP to confirm study results The study results indicated that
learners‟ L1 cognition played a significant role in affecting learners‟ L2 competence, of
which negative conceptual transfer made up a sizeable proportion In particular, the
Vietnamese cognition of space (M < 41 47) was responsible for negative L1 transfer to the
target language (English) Gender and other non-linguistic factors also contributed to
language transfer on the quality of L2 communication with the sig < 0 05 This thesis
recommends that language teachers take students‟ L1 conceptual transfer into account
when planning lessons in order to prevent some predictable mistakes in their L2 usage
Linguists, translators, and interpreters must understand the relevant L1 conceptual
transfer to improve their L2 production in their work

ii


CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

i

ABSTRACT

ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

viii

LIST OF THE FIGURES

x

LIST OF THE TABLES

xi

Chapter One INTRODUCTION

1

1 1 Research background

1

1 2 Statement of the problem

4

1 3 Aims and Objectives

9

1 4 Research questions

11

1 5 Definition of terms

13

1 6 Significance of the study

16

1 7 Scope of the study

17

1 8 Outline of the thesis

18

Chapter

Two

LITERATURE

REVIEW

AND

THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND

20

2 1 Introducing Language transfer

20

2 2 Language transfer problems

22

2 2 1 Problems of definition

23

2 2 2 Problems with comparison

24

2 2 3 Problems of prediction

25

2 2 3 1 Positive transfer

25

2 2 3 2 Negative transfer

25

2 2 4 Problems of generalization

27

2 2 4 1 Language universals

28

2 2 4 2 Linguistic typologies

28

iii


2 2 4 3 Universalist assumptions

29

2 3 Language transfer development

29

2 3 1 Behaviorist view on language transfer

31

2 3 2 Mentalist view on language transfer

32

2 3 3 Cognitive view of language transfer

33

2 4 English prepositions

35

2 4 1 English prepositions from the Morphological perspective

37

2 4 2 English prepositions from the Syntactic perspective

38

2 4 3 English prepositions from the Cognitive Linguistics Perspective

40

2 4 3 1 The trajector/ subject and landmark of prepositions

40

2 4 3 2 Domains

41

2 4 3 3 Image Schema

42

2 4 3 4 Metaphor

43

2 4 3 5 Embodiment

44

2 5 Cognitive studies on second language acquisition

45

2 6 Cognitive studies on English preposition usages in the Vietnamese context48
2 7 Studies related to Cognitive studies of prepositional meanings

50

2 8 Studies related to negative transfer on prepositions

53

2 9 Studies related to biological gender as a source of language transfer

54

2 10 The theoretical framework for language transfer

56

2 11 Summary

59

Chapter Three RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

60

3 1 Research context

60

3 2 Research design

61

3 2 1 Survey design

62

3 2 1 1 Population and Sample Size

62

3 2 1 2 Participants

65

3 2 1 3 Materials

65

3 2 1 4 Data collection and analysis procedures

66

3 2 1 5 Variables and measurement

66

iv


3 2 1 6 Reliability and validity

67

3 2 1 7 Hypothesis Testing

68

3 2 1 7 Statistics report

69

3 2 2 Empirical design

72

3 2 2 1 Participants

72

3 2 2 2 Materials

73

3 2 2 3 Procedures

73

3 2 2 4 Variables and measurement

74

3 2 3 Corpus design

74

3 2 3 1 Preparatory Courses for VSTEP Corpus (PCVC)

74

3 2 3 2 British National Corpus (BNC)

75

3 2 3 3 Text collection and Processing

76

3 3 Summary

77

Chapter Four NEGATIVE L1 TRANSFER IN THE USE OF ENGLISH
PREPOSITIONS BY VIETNAMESE LEARNERS OF ENGLISH

79

4 1 Factors related to crosslinguistic similarity

79

4 2 Factors related to Cognitive embodiment and the difference among regions
in terms of language transfer affecting the usage of specific prepositions

85

4 3 Factors related to Recency

90

4 4 Factors related to the learning environment

92

4 5 Factors related to the low level of learning

97

4 6 Factors related to area of L1 language acquisition

99

4 7 Factors related to L1 frequency use

103

4 8 Summary

106

Chapter Five INTERFERENCE OF L1 BACKGROUND AND CULTURE
ON THE CHOICE OF ENGLISH PREPOSITIONS

108

5 1 Tendency of Vietnamese learners to use simple prepositions rather than
complex prepositions

108

5 2 Geographical factors and favorite colors negatively affecting the choice of
English prepositions

113

v


5 3 Conclusion

117

Chapter Six GENDER AS A SOURCE OF NEGATIVE TRANSFER

118

6 1 Qualitative results

120

6 2 Quantitative results

122

6 2 1 Prepositions Indicating Location

122

6 2 2 Prepositions Indicating Movement or Direction

125

6 2 3 Prepositions Indicating Time

131

6 2 4 Compound Prepositions

135

6 2 5 Prepositions collocating with other words

137

6 2 6 Prepositions in Phrasal Verbs and participles

141

6 3 Summary

143

Chapter Seven CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS

144

7 1 Recapitulation

144

7 2 Pedagogical implications for teaching English prepositions

148

7 3 Limitation and suggestions for further research

149

AUTHOR’S WORKS RELATED TO THE THESIS

151

REFERENCES

152

APPENDIX 1

178

APPENDIX 2

183

APPENDIX 3

186

APPENDIX 4

206

vi


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have given me help
with the completion of this Ph D thesis
First and foremost, I would like to express sincere thanks to my supervisors,
Assoc Prof Dr Tran Huu Phuc and Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Tat Thang for all
their support and encouragement during my long Ph D research period Without
their advice and constant feedback, this Ph D thesis would not have been
completed
Secondly, I owe my sincere gratitude to Dr Ngu Thien Hung, Assoc Prof
Phan Van Hoa, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Van Long, Assoc Prof Dr Luu Quy

Khuong, Dr Le Thi Giao Chi, Assoc Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thi Quynh Hoa,
Assoc Prof Dr Ho Thi Kieu Oanh, Dr Tran Quang Hai, Prof Dr Tran Van
Phuoc, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Quang Ngoan, and other academic panelists who
advised and helped me during many discussions and seminars conducted during this
Ph D thesis Their constructive comments have kept my Ph D thesis focused on the
central goals of the study
Thirdly, I would like to thank the lecturers and staff in the Faculty of English
and Department of Academic Affairs at the University of Foreign Language Studies
- University of Da Nang for their expertise and family-like support during my Ph D
academic life
Fourthly, I wholeheartedly thank the teachers and my colleagues in the
Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry,
who were always very helpful and provided me with their assistance throughout my
Ph D research period
Lastly, I would like to thank my wife and our children for their love, care,
and unfailing support me while completing this Ph D thesis

vii


ABBREVIATIONS
AI

Artificial Intelligent

BNC

British National Corpus

CEFR

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages

CL

Cognitive Linguistics

CLI

Cross-linguistic influence

Df/ df

Degrees of freedom

EA

Error Analysis

EFL

English as a foreign language

ELT

English language teaching

FL

Foreign Language

HUFI

Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry

ICT

Information and Communication Technology

L1

First language

L1>L2

The transfer from L1 to L2

L2

Second language

LCS

Lexical Conceptual Structure

LM

Landmark

M

Mean

MOET

Ministry of Education and Training

N

The number of valid (i e , non-missing) observations

NP

Noun phrase

P1-12

Participant(s) 1-12

PCVC

Preparatory Courses for VSTEP Corpus

PP

Prepositional phrase

Q

Question

SD

Standard deviation

Sig

Significant level

viii


SLA
TOEIC
TR
VSTEP

Second Language Acquisition
Test Of English for International Communication
Trajector
Vietnamese Standardised Test of English Proficiency

ix


LIST OF THE FIGURES
Figure 1 1 The correct Trajector and Landmark for "Mom is in the garden " _________ 6
Figure 1 2 Possible trajectories for “Quả bóng ở trên đầu anh ấy ” ________________ 7
Figure 1 3 “Possible trajectories for “The cat jumped over the wall ” (Lindstromberg,
2010) __________________________________________________________________ 8

Figure 2 1 Detection operates on input to send an utterance of grammatical relationship
for hypothesis testing (Tomlin & Villa, 2008, p 196)

45

Figure 2 2 Conceptual transfer framework in Vietnamese context of learning English

57

Figure 3 1 A sample of the first 39 concordances of preposition „IN‟ in the PCVC

76

Figure 4 1 Vietnamese and English preposition comparison

80

Figure 4 2 The frequency of English prepositions in Writing assignments (Source PCVC)

81

Figure 4 3 Picture B – in the task of describing a picture

82

Figure 4 4 The frequency of English collocation of preposition 'IN'

84

Figure 4 5 The frequency of English collocation of preposition 'ON'

84

Figure 4 6 Frequencies of English prepositions employed in describing Picture B

86

Figure 4 7 Frequencies of English prepositions employed in describing five pictures

88

Figure 4 8 The chatbot screenshots of a test in experiment

93

Figure 4 9 The demonstration for “ACROSS … FROM” with the street running between
two houses

100

Figure 4 10 The demonstrations of choice „IN‟ or „ON‟
Figure 4 11 The list of -ing morpheme in Vietnamese learners ' essays

102
105

Figure 6 1 Pie chart representation of male participants‟ questionnaire response rates 118
Figure 6 2 Pie chart representation of female respondents‟ questionnaire response rates
Figure 6 3 Pie chart representation of gender-secretive participants‟ questionnaire
response rates

119

Figure 6 4 The illustration for LM and TR of English preposition 'UNDER'

138

Figure 7 1 The process of cross-linguistic influence

147

x

119


LIST OF THE TABLES
Table 2 1 The domains for three English prepositions AT, ON, and IN _____________ 42

Figure 3 1 A sample of the first 39 concordances of preposition „IN‟ in the PCVC

76

Figure 4 1 Vietnamese and English preposition comparison

80

Figure 4 2 The frequency of English prepositions in Writing assignments (Source PCVC)
81
Figure 4 3 Picture B – in the task of describing a picture

82

Figure 4 4 The frequency of English collocation of preposition 'IN'

84

Figure 4 5 The frequency of English collocation of preposition 'ON'

84

Figure 4 6 Frequencies of English prepositions employed in describing Picture B

86

Figure 4 7 Frequencies of English prepositions employed in describing five pictures

88

Figure 4 8 The chatbot screenshots of a test in experiment

93

Figure 4 9 The demonstration for “ACROSS … FROM” with the street running between
two houses

100

Figure 4 10 The demonstrations of choice „IN‟ or „ON‟

102

Figure 4 11 The list of -ing morpheme in Vietnamese learners ' essays

105

Table 5 1 Simple and Compound and complex Prepositions in the questionnaire

108

Table 5 2 Score report for simple and complex prepositions

109

Table 5 3 Participants‟ performance based on their qualifications for simple and complex
prepositions

110

Table 5 4 T-Test result of variation between Bachelor and others

111

Table 5 5 Simple prepositions wrong answers percentage

112

Table 5 6 Complex prepositions wrong answers percentage

112

Table 5 7 Total Score, Place of Residence Distribution Table

114

Table 5 8 Total mean score for social factors

115

Table 5 9 The correlations of the location and Scores

115

Table 5 10 ANOVA Test for the correlation between the total score Figure 6 1 and other
factors

116

xi


Table 6 1 Location prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for items 1-3 in term of
gender differences

122

Table 6 2 Location prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 1

123

Table 6 3 Location prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 2

124

Table 6 4 Location prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 3

124

Table 6 5 Location prepositional accuracy among the gender-secretive respondents

125

Table 6 6 Movement prepositional accuracy among respondents

126

Table 6 7 Movement prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 4

126

Table 6 8 Movement prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 5

127

Table 6 9 Movement prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 6

127

Table 6 10 Movement prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 7

127

Table 6 11 Movement prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 8

128

Table 6 12 The gender's performance on the use of movement prepositions

129

Table 6 13 Group statistics between males' and females' performance in Items 4-8

130

Table 6 14 Time prepositional accuracy among respondents

131

Table 6 15 Time prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for item 9

131

Table 6 16 Time prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 10

132

Table 6 17 Time prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency for Item 11

133

Table 6 18 Group statistics between males' and females' performance on items 9-11

133

Table 6 19 Compound prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency among respondents
136
Table 6 20 The gender's performance on the use of compound prepositions

136

Table 6 21 Word-combing prepositional accuracy/inaccuracy frequency among
respondents

137

Table 6 22 The gender's performance on the use of prepositions with the other words

140

Table 6 23 Group statistics between males' and females' performance on items 19-25 141
Table 6 24 The gender's performance on the use of prepositions with phrasal verbs and
participles

142

xii


Chapter One
INTRODUCTION

1 1 Research background
In Vietnam, English is taught at five levels preschool, primary school, junior
high school, high school, and higher education Proficiency in English is believed to
be one of the means to ensure the nation‘s integration into global trade and
commerce As a result, the Ministry of Education and Training (henceforth, MOET)
decided to choose English as one of the compulsory subjects for graduation
examinations for all levels of Vietnamese education Despite the high expectation of
students‘ English proficiency from the Vietnamese authorities, the results in the
high school graduation English examination for three years in a row were rather
poor The average English scores for the high school graduation examination for the
three years from 2018 to 2020 were 3 91, 4 36, and 4 57 on a ten-point scale,
respectively (MOET, 2020) This meant that English examination results were one
of the lowest of all subjects tested in high school graduation examination, even
though this subject was given the full focus of the National Foreign Language 2020
Project (Canh & Ngoc, 2017)
The present low level of English knowledge might arise from the process of
learning and teaching English in Vietnam Although MOET has introduced English
as a compulsory subject to students at an early age, even high school students who
have spent ten years learning English encounter many problems in the National
High School Graduation Examination One of the reasons could be that learners
focus too much on nouns, verbs, and adjectives because learners generally assume
that these parts of speech are crucial Learners spend most of their time learning
nouns, verbs, and adjectives to master English vocabulary actively; consequently,
learners may neglect other parts of speech

1


One of the most predominant occurrences of negative L1 transfer is in
English prepositional errors made by EFL learners This has garnered worldwide

attention in the past decades due to English prepositions playing a crucial role in
forming complete sentences (Jarvis, 2000; Yates, 1999; Özbay & Bozkurt, 2017)
According to Lindstromberg (2010), there are 154 English prepositions, while
Vietnamese does not have an equivalent system Vietnamese grammarians try to
explain the notion of prepositions as a means of conveying grammatical meanings
This means that Vietnamese prepositions are ‗the words to create the relations, and
according to this, Vietnamese prepositions are classified as a preposition of place,
time, reason, purpose, etc (Tr ầ n Tr ọ ng Kim et al , 1940) ‘ Vietnamese linguists do
not have a clear and unified approach to defining Vietnamese prepositions Thus,
the classification of Vietnamese prepositions is not consistent According to Cao
Xuân Hạo (1991), Vietnamese prepositions are functional (‗hư từ‟) These
functional words are sentence elements or phrase modifiers which are used to
introduce a phrase and phrase functions in the sentence Similarly, Vietnamese
prepositions are defined by Nguyễn Thiện Giáp (2008), is a part of speech that
involves ―của, để, bằng, etc ‖ and connects with a noun – its modifier – to form a
larger syntactical unit called a prepositional phrase (pp 264-265) The following
examples from (1 1) to (1 3) demonstrate these
(1 1) Tham chi tấm áo của người,
(1 2) Tiếc công anh đắp đập be bờ
Để ai quảy đó, mang lờ đến đơm
(1 3) Một ngày đằng đẵng xem bằng ba thu
However, Vũ Đức Nghiệu et al (2008) do not even mention prepositions in
their ten Vietnamese parts of speech Their classification only includes nouns,
verbs, adjectives, numbers, pronouns, adjuncts, linking words, particles, emotional
words, and exclamation words Under this classification, Vietnamese prepositions
are grouped with conjunctions as a larger unit namely, conjunction-preposition
words This term originated from traditional grammar because both prepositions

2

and conjunctions function as devices to connect words to form a sentence The only
thing that distinguishes them is whether they are clause-dependent or not (Cao Xuân
Hạo et al , 2005) Conjunctions connect coordinated clauses together, while
prepositions connect independent and dependent phrases Although Vietnamese
prepositions are defined differently by Vietnamese scholars, the independent –
dependent clause relationship is the key to defining words as prepositions as in the
following examples from (1 4) to (1 7)
(1 4) Áo của ai

(Tr ầ n Tr ọng Kim et al , 1940)

(1 5) Ơng ấy cất ngơi nhà để bán

(Bùi Đức Tịnh)

(1 6) Viết bằng bút chì

(Nguyễn Kim Thản)

(1 7) Nếu thật sự muốn đi tìm chân lý thì tuy thù đồ nhưng nhất định sẽ đồng
(Cao Xuân Hạo et al , 2005)

quy

The independent - dependent relationship can be between a noun or noun
phrase with its post-modifier in example (1 4), or a predicate with its modifier in
examples (1 5) and (1 6), or a sentence with its adverbial clause in example (1 7)
Due to the variations in the definition of Vietnamese prepositions, the number of
Vietnamese prepositions is hard to determine, and many scholars have ignored this

issue in their studies That changed in the early 2000s when Trần Quang Hải (2001)
and Trần Cảnh Hoa (2001) identified and listed 40 Vietnamese prepositions
systematically, namely ‗bằng, bên, bởi, cho, của, cùng, do, dưới, đặng, để, đến,
giữa, hay, hòng, lại, lên, ngoài, nhằm, nhờ, như, nơi, ở, qua, quanh, ra, sang, sau,
tại, tận, theo, tới, trên, trong, trước, từ, vào, về, vì, với, and xuống ‘
Vietnamese linguistics scholars have carried out contrastive analysis studies
on Vietnamese and English prepositions in which they tried to explain the
similarities and differences between the two languages by comparing and
contrasting them A few cognitive linguistics studies related to Vietnamese and/or
English prepositions have been published recently; most of them focused
exclusively on prepositions of motion or direction Moreover, learners assume that
prepositions are unimportant parts of speech, so they tend to choose a word with a

3


similar meaning in their mother tongue rather than the correct preposition or particle
when using or translating into English This type of L1 transfer negatively affects
the acquisition of fluent native-like mastery of the English language for years It can
be seen that CL studies of language transfer when using prepositions have not been
conducted yet, especially with regard to negative transfer

1 2 Statement of the problem
There exists a big difference between learning one‘s first language (L1) and
any other one When learners are learning a second language (L2), they already
have a whole linguistic system inside their heads If learners have grammar in their
heads, they can simply keep it once their system has been wired with the grammar
of their first language to second language In other words, they transfer knowledge
over from their first language into their second language until they get more
information about their second language and revise all those ideas to make a new

grammar, but L1 > L2 transfer happens first Learners frequently follow the same
path while learning a new piece of L2 language, regardless of where they come
from; nevertheless, they make distinct patterns of mistakes when learning the same
L2 structure, depending on what their mother tongue is For example, we can look
at an example of pronunciation of English word „HAVE‟ [hæv] French does not have
‗h‘ sound of beginning, but it is totally fined with this sound at the end of the word,
so a French learner of English will usually say something like [æv] (Qingya &
Xiaojia, 2020) A German speaker, on the other hand, comes equipped with the
language that already has it, but German does not really have ‗v‘ sound at the end of
the word, so they often say something like [hæf], instead of correct sound [hæv]
(Němcová, 2019), and many other examples of other L1 influences on the English
language (Daftarifard & Shirkhani, 2011; Jiang, 2011; Seddighi, 2010; Weda &
Sakti, 2017)
The concerning questions to language teachers are how much learners
transfer from their native language to their L2 language production and how

4


teachers recognize the sources of their L1 transfer Many studies have shown that
language transfer happens to plenty of cases a single sound, a consonant cluster, a
whole word, a syntactic structure, or a semantic feature (Bolonyai, 1998; CardenasHagan et al , 2007; Daftarifard & Shirkhani, 2011; Jiang, 2011; Seddighi, 2010;
Talebi, 2013; Weda & Sakti, 2017; Yu, 2011) For example, English people say,
―Barney frequently wear suits ‖ because English grammar rule governing adverb
―frequently‖ goes before the verb ―wear‖, but in French an adverb comes after the
verb, as in ―Barney porte fréquemment des costumes ‖ French speakers of English
may say, ―Barney wears frequently suits ‖
Vietnamese learners of English face the same challenges when they learn or
use English prepositions These challenges can be described as follows
(i) There are not exactly the same number of prepositions in Vietnamese

as there are in English
(ii) An English preposition that is combined with other words can have
many meanings, and some of its meanings are quite different from its
core sense For instance, the phrasal verb "make up" involves eight
different meanings according to their contexts;
(iii) There is a significant difference in the way Vietnamese and English
speakers understand prepositions
These problems are strongly interlinked with the following examples from
(1 8a) to (1 13a)
(1 8a) Mẹ đang ở ngoài sân
(1 9a) Mẹ đang ở trong sân
(1 10a) Mẹ đang ở trên sân
(1 11a) Mẹ đang ở dưới sân
(1 12a) Mẹ đang ở trước sân
(1 13a) Mẹ đang ở sau sân

5


From these Vietnamese sentences (1 8a) to (1 13a), it can be inferred that at
least six Vietnamese words functioned as a preposition to express the relation
between two referents mom and garden, while this proposition is expressed with a
single preposition and only one possible sentence in English “Mom is in the
garden ” The LM and TR of this reference frame can be illustrated in Figure 1 1

TR

LM

Figure 1 1 The correct Trajector and Landmark for "Mom is in the garden "

In fact, Vietnamese learners of English often use inappropriate sentences to
express this concept in their daily conversations or writing, except for example
(2 9b)
(1 8b) Mom is outside of/ out of the garden
(1 9b) Mom is in the garden
(1 10b) Mom is on the garden
(1 11b) Mom is under the garden
(1 12b) Mom is in front of the garden
(1 13b) Mom is behind the garden
In the examples (1 8b, 1 10b-1 13b), they failed to identify the exact LM and
TR in the English frame of reference, so they made mistakes by using terms like
„OUTSIDE‟, „ON‟, „IN‟, „FRONT OF‟,

or

„BEHIND‟

for the relation between LM and TR

illustrated in Figure 1 1 Negative L1 transfer may account for such errors
Another way to look at this problem is to consider the negative transfer of
Vietnamese spatial prepositions to the use of English prepositions Vietnamese
learners of English may have problems using English spatial prepositions due to the
limited number of Vietnamese spatial prepositions compared to English Also, there

6


is typically an ‗implicit landmark‟ in which both speakers and listeners are
involved For instance, a talk between a dad and a son in the living room

Dad Mẹ con đang ở đâu?
Son Mẹ đang ở sau vườn
The son responded, ―Mom is behind the garden‖ because there were two
typical landmarks related to a house ‗a garden - at the back‘ (LM1) and ‗a yard - in
the front of the house‘ (LM2) in the son's cognition The son may not recognize that
his mom is actually in the garden, not behind the garden, but his lifelong linguistic
cognition indicates that she is behind the garden The word ‗sau‘ (‗behind‘) has
been cemented in his mind for a long time, but not in terms of indicating the actual
positions of two referents, mom and garden This frame of reference is opposite to
that of English as shown in Figure 1 1 This phenomenon is generated by their
cognition rather than acquisition through learning One of the challenges that
Vietnamese learners often face using English spatial prepositions is the confusing
pair of locative prepositions

'OVER'

and

'ABOVE'

as well as

'UNDER'

and

'BELOW'

due

to their similar meanings Vietnamese speakers only have one preposition 'trên' that
indicates all the spatial concepts of its English counterparts
'BEYOND,'

'ATOP,'

and another preposition 'dưới' for

'ABOVE,' 'OVER,' 'ON,'
'UNDER,'

'BELOW,'

For instance, when Vietnamese learners want to express the idea

'UNDERNEATH'

encapsulated in the sentence (1 14) ― Quả bóng ở trên đầ u anh ấ y‖ in English, they
may not know which preposition is best to describe the positions of the ball and
man‟s head In fact, we can find at least three trajectories that might be true for the
ball and man‟s head (see Figure 1 2)

ON

ABOVE

OVER

Figure 1 2 Possible trajectories for “Quả bóng ở trên đầu anh ấy ”

7

and


Thereby, Vietnamese learners of English often find it challenging to choose
the correct preposition for a specific context Even in English ‗over‘ has a
complicated semantic network of LMs and TRs They may have great difficulty
understanding all its possible trajectories because all of them are expressed with
only one word in Vietnamese, 'trên ‟ Actually, the semantic network of the English
preposition „over' is demonstrated in Figure 1 3

(a)

(c)

(b)

(d)

Figure 1 3 “Possible trajectories for “The cat jumped over the wall ” (Lindstromberg,
2010)
The above examples represent just a few of the instances of negative transfer
from L1 to L2 when using prepositions This phenomenon is called cross-linguistic
influence (CLI) CLI is the influence of a person‘s knowledge and use of one
language on their use of another language Cross linguistics has been of interest to
scholars since the beginning of international contact and change and the resultant
effects on the languages in use The earliest reference to cross-linguistics and
bilingualism can be found in Homer‘s Odyssey, where Odysseus discusses the
mixed words of Crete with Penelope (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008) The prevalence of

multilingualism in the ancient world led to cross-linguistic issues that have
influenced a variety of texts such as personal letters, legal and commercial
documents, epitaphs, and literary treaties These texts provide evidence of negative

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attitudes towards CLI including disparaging remarks about speakers of Greek
dialects made by early philosophers and writers Some researchers believe that CLI
is a result of modified linguistic inputs meaning contact with other languages has a
direct impact on the learning process There is available literature that indicates that
in addition to linguistic exposure, CLI can be influenced by other factors of a
learner's identity (Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008)
To sum up, prepositions are basic word forms used to express the concept of
space, time, and manner In recent times, cognitive linguistics has noted with
interest the sematic nature of English prepositions because they are not easy to learn
and are frequently subject to negative transfer The use of prepositions is often
arbitrary and unpredictable Therefore, experimental studies into the way people
learn prepositions vary from semantic components to their actual meanings in
specific contexts Cognitive linguistics started with the study of English
prepositions in a systematic way (Lakoff, 1972) The investigation into negative L1
transfer in this study was conducted using a framework based partly on recent
surveys examining the efficacy of cognitive linguistic approaches to learning and
then applying that framework to the acquisition of prepositions of motion, location,
and action

1 3 Aims and Objectives
The role of the CL approach to the study of L1 conceptual transfer has not
been widely reported This study aimed to gain an understanding of negative L1
transfer on the use of English prepositions from a CL perspective Since there is a

vast difference between English and Vietnamese prepositions both in their cognition
and the structure of the two languages, Vietnamese learners might transfer some of
their cognition from their language, culture, and lived experience to their English
usage A range of linguistic and non-linguistic factors was investigated to ascertain
which factors negatively influenced the participants' performance when using

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English prepositions The following issues were examined to set precise and concise
objectives for the study
The primary objective was to identify factors that resulted in negative L1
transfer via the use of English prepositions Eight hypotheses were established to
examine the semantic features of English prepositions, which Vietnamese learners
of English may use inappropriately From the survey, factors related to crosslinguistic similarities were analyzed to produce a complete understanding of
linguistic transfer because most of the available studies on cognitive grammar were
theoretical and ignored its role in teaching and learning Likewise, other factors
such as cognitive embodiment, recency, the learning environment, L1 language
acquisition, and language proficiency were also included in the study In this study,
the Type I error, which aimed to test whether an effect for treatment was true or not,
was taken into accounts All the data was analyzed to identify which factor(s)
associated with language transfer were statistically significant by setting the alpha
(α) level) at 0 05 Three research techniques, namely survey, empirical, and corpus,
were employed to be able to draw a firm conclusion and bridging the gap between
linguistics and language teaching to contribute to the field of applied linguistics
The second objective was to identify the choice of English prepositions made
by Vietnamese learners in terms of negative transfer A questionnaire was utilized
to discover the schema sanctioning the use of the English preposition, basing on the
accuracy rates Some non-linguistic factors such as religion, favorite colors, and
location were also added to provide a complete picture for investigating L1 culture

and background transfer To achieve this objective, the T-test and Chi-square test of
independence were used to compare the variables, e g , simple prepositions and
complex prepositions results, to see the difference in participants‘ choices A report
on the interference of L1 background and culture on the choice of English
prepositions explained why most Vietnamese learners tended to use simple rather
than compound or complex prepositions Only variables with p-value of 0 05 or less

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than 0 05 were considered statistically significant in proving or disproving
individual hypotheses
The third objective was to evaluate whether gender was a source of negative
transfer Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to investigate whether
different genders had different levels of negative L1 transfer or not The author used
the ANOVA test to determine whether the scores of three groups, viz , males,
females, and gender-secretives, differed statistically or not By examining each
section of the questionnaire, the results showed that gender negatively affected the
use of specific English prepositions
Lastly, this study considered the irregularities and arbitrariness of preposition
meanings that most participants might struggle with when having to learn the
various meanings associated with particular prepositions in their different semantic
networks From a negative transfer perspective, prepositional errors showed how
the communicative context oriented and influenced individual learner's conceptual
transfer

1 4 Research questions
As discussed in Section 1 2 Statement of the problem, prior studies are
limited to a subset of CL perspectives on L1 transfer This study used CL as a basis
to investigate the factors that negatively influence the use of English prepositions in

motivated polysemy networks Some potential open-ended questions related to the
stated objective remain unanswered Hence, the author explored the three critical
research questions
1 What factors negatively impact how Vietnamese learners use English
prepositions from a cognitive linguistic perspective?
2 How aware are Vietnamese learners of English of the distinction between
simple and complex English prepositions?

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3 Is there any relationship between gender and the usage of English
prepositions among Vietnamese learners of English?
This thesis will explore English prepositional use by Vietnamese learners from a CL
perspective by utilizing English assignments based on the three research questions
To achieve this, eight significant hypotheses as follows were setup upon
Within the domain of RQ 1, the following five hypotheses were set
Hypothesis 1 Vietnamese intra-lingual interference does not affect
prepositional meaning expressed by Vietnamese learners of English
Hypothesis 2 Cognitive Embodiment does not play any significant role in
terms of negative language transfer affecting a specific preposition's usage
Hypothesis 3 Learners with more than one foreign language do not use
English prepositions better than those who only study English as a foreign
language
Hypothesis 4 A suitable learning environment has no negative transfer effect
on learning English prepositions
Hypothesis 5 There are no significant differences among low, intermediate,
and advanced level Vietnamese learners of English in terms of negative
transfer affecting specific preposition usage
For the investigation of RQ 2, the author chose the following two hypotheses

Hypothesis 6 The way in which English is learned does not affect the choice
of English prepositions
Hypothesis 7 Vietnamese English learners tend not to use simple English
prepositions
For RQ 3, the author formulated the following hypothesis
Hypothesis 8 There are no significant differences between genders in terms
of negative transfer when acquiring English prepositions among Vietnamese
learners of English

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